End of the year

I kind of don’t like New Year’s resolutions because they’re bullshit. They’re also cultural. They’re cultural bullshit. There are probably graphs showing how well people keep up with them and by March, it’s probably all to shit. Going into 2017 with New Year’s resolutions seems kind of dumb anyway. It’s just going to be more of the same and things have been unpleasant in 2016 going back to 2015. Something was off, it just didn’t have a name yet. Because “2016” is branding, it’s a concept, it’s not just a year. It’s kind of the year we got our comeuppance. We’re George and Isabel just died. What if the original Ambersons isn’t better? I mean, Robert Wise is suspect for a lot of reasons, but what if he’s right? Welles certainly isn’t without his faults and he sounded overconfident in Ambersons. It’s possible RKO—who made some excellent pictures and some excellently made ones—actually did save him. Or Wise is full of it. I mean, he made Rooftops after all.